The Essential Skills and Attitude Of A Manager

The attitude of a team is the reflection of that of its manager. As a manager, your influence is crucial for the healthy functioning of your team. Therefore, it is essential that you need to inculcate the right attitude, lest it stifles team effectiveness. Here are a few suggestions that could help you acquire a positive attitude.

Be informed: As a manager, gather as much of the latest information in your field as possible. A well-informed manager can easily and effectively attract and inspire his team members. In this regard, you can explore primary resources such as your peers, superiors as well as experts in the field or secondary resources such as print material and the Internet.

Be strategically sound: Being strategically sound means anticipating things before they happen and getting ready to face any new situation that arises. It does not mean that you foresee everything, but most things. Planning, organizing, managing and controlling are essential to be an effective manager. They form the core of a manager’s hard skills. Therefore, you need to acquire the necessary skills that help you define goals, set an action plan and guide the team towards their fulfilment.

Be entrepreneurial: Ingenuity is the skill that defines an effective manager. Ingenious managers take the pressure off employees by finding innovative solutions to their problems. With their inventiveness, they can find new opportunities that take their business forward. They command the respect and loyalty of their subordinates. Therefore, develop an entrepreneurial attitude and keep exploring new ideas, processes and areas of business. And, most of all, be flexible.

Welcome change: Be open to change, whether positive or negative, and have a plan to manage it. This helps you create a healthy and positive work environment for your subordinates so that they give their best without getting bogged down by the fear of change. Never be reactive because it often leads to negative decision-making. If you are reactive, you may not have your subordinates actively working for you when you are confronted with complex problems.

Be inclusive: Embrace diversity and encourage inputs from subordinates. Never blame your subordinates for the team’s mistakes. Though it may be easy for you to evade responsibility for your decisions by pinning the blame on the team, your subordinates develop a low opinion of you and are averse to taking instructions from you.

A manager’s attitude affects team morale and productivity. Therefore, it is important that the manager has positive leadership qualities that promote a productive work environment. So, strive to develop and display a positive and proactive attitude to be a successful manager.

Absolutely entrepreneurial and flexible – I find it to be exciting when my team generates solutions that I hadn’t considered!

B M Gupta

Yes, I agree the comment made.
Manager should always think how to get best from the team,he should set example for others he has to work as a mentor for whole team,findout weakness,areas for improvements,organise training set the directions,always be optimistic,strive for results he should be leader in true sense

Harish Sharma

A good Manager should have good leader skills, lead by example, guide the team in difficult times. He must balance long term benifits and…

http://reynoldzembe.blogspot.com Reynold

A manager is that person who takes time to atticulate the strengths and weakness of their team and identifies a possible role that each member could play to attain the desired result.They also identify the teams that are within their working teams that build the emotional health of a team- too contrast characters may compromise the coodination of a team thus rightful patnering within the team is totally the intelligence of the manager.A hands on manager induces the spirit of involvement within their team whilst monitoring the functional scope and effectiveness of their team.Religeously speaking, a manager protects their team from external factors whose shock may destabilise the team ie inter-departmental teams working on cross platform projects thus the team is so secure in the guidance of their leader.

Betsy Hawkins

Attitude is a learned response to life. It is a thought/behavior process that has been shaped by a complex interplay of past experience, confidence and self-awareness. I am concerned when I hear that organizational development professionals want to write off poor attitude as an immovable personal trait. Particularly when I know that it is often management practices and unchecked/inappropriate behaviors that trigger attitudinal issues within the workforce.

How do people make choices about how they will show up? It is their underlying (and often unexamined) beliefs and emotions that drive behaviors. I love the analogy that Jonathon Haidt, University of Virginia psychologist and author of The Happiness Hypothesis created. Haidt says that our emotional side is like an Elephant and our rational side is its Rider. Perched atop the Elephant, the Rider holds the reins and seems to be the leader. But the Rider’s control is precarious because the Rider is so small relative to the Elephant. Anytime the six-ton Elephant and Rider disagree about which direction to go, the Rider is going to lose. Anyone who struggles with weight loss or changing a habit knows this is true.

I have had far too many successful interventions with managers who have a “bad attitude”. I agree that none of the successful interventions occurred due to a one day ‘sheep dipping’ class on emotional intelligence. Success happened due to a well designed, individualized intervention that included a 360 degree assessment, clear goals, an accountability system and a compassionate mentor/coach.

Is this an easy process? …No. But neither is organizational development work. It is a systematic approach to closing the gap between current and desired outcomes within an organization. An organization, by the way, that is dependent upon flawed human beings (we all are!) to achieve success. Human performance systems are not easy to implement – but the underlying reasons they succeed are relatively simple.

So to answer your question…I think that if I was to pick the top skills needed by a manager to engender improved attitudes in themselves and within work place it would be 1. Realistic goal setting and execution. 2. Listening skills. 3. Brainstorming. 4. Feedback (giving and receiving).

http://www.evolutioncbl.com Joseph Mullin

Be Informed:
I would skim read many industry media to stay up on what was new. I would discuss these with my team as a seed for future use.

Be Strategically Sound:
I see this as risk assessment. IF you can identify as many risk as possible them you can have mitigation plans for each. This makes handling them less stressful on everyone.

Be Entrepreneurial:
This could be one approach. The other would be to teach your team another method for problem solving or to discuss possible other methods with your team. YO may come up with an innovative method.

Welcome Change:
This goes with risk/benefit assessment. If risk is greater can it be mitigated so that it is more a benefit? If it cannot then shelve the idea for later when it may not be so risky. IF the benefit is greater but still has risk, then have a mitigation plan and go for it.

Be Inclusive:
The largest part of team success is if their manager/leader listens I mean genuinely listens and is open to suggestions that will work.
The second part is that while at one company we adopted a mantra of “Blame the process not the person”. I n almost every case no matter where it was within the company we found that mistakes were made due to the process more than the person.

Managers should have or need to adopt some of the characteristics of leaders to become highly effective in their position. This also lines them up for the succession in the company.

Lakshmi C

A manager must be assertive, be able to convey balanced feedback and take timely corrective action when people/situations are losing track of the overall objectives of the business. Apart from these, a manager should also be able to handle change management effectively, since due to various external factors, rapid structural and process changes are happening across all kinds of businesses. These changes if not handled well by the managers, can have a devastating effect on the team.

Tony Daniel, Ph.D.

There are not an array of skills that can be gained that will help a manager attain a positive attitude. Attitude is a result of proper thinking. A person’s level of thinking heavily influences all other parts of his or her life. Changed thinking affects an individual’s beliefs. These changed beliefs affect expectations. When expectations change, attitudes change. When attitudes coincide with the changed thinking, beliefs, and expectations, changed behavior is the result. Attitude is a mental process. It is not a physical process that can be attained by talent. If you want to change your behavior and your effectiveness as a leader, begin with your thinking.

http://gamefreerider.wordpress.com Free Rider 2

I just read all your articles and it’s very interesting. I love the way you describe things, I really enjoyed reading it !